


I Think I've Seen This Film Before (And I Didn't Like the Ending)

by Yours_Truly_Commander_Shepard



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Based on the Nature of the Kink, F/M, Kinktober, Mildly Dubious Consent, One Shot, Post-Canon, Post-Dragon Age: Inquisition - Trespasser DLC, Somnophilia, The Fade
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-15
Updated: 2020-10-15
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:34:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,392
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27025141
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yours_Truly_Commander_Shepard/pseuds/Yours_Truly_Commander_Shepard
Summary: The Inquisitor isn't sleeping well.  Solas tries to help.  It goes about as well as it ever does.
Relationships: Female Inquisitor/Solas (Dragon Age), Female Lavellan/Solas, Fen'Harel | Solas/Female Lavellan
Comments: 11
Kudos: 100
Collections: Fen'Harem's Dragon Age Kinktober 2020





	I Think I've Seen This Film Before (And I Didn't Like the Ending)

Teacups rattled as Ellana added more hot water to her cup, then Merrill’s. It gave her perverse amusement to start her mornings with tea. A lot of tea, recently, to feign alertness. She was not sleeping well. 

Merrill pretended to take a polite sip, then pushed her cup to the side. Had to be very stressful to maintain such divided loyalties. Ellana knew that from experience. 

Ellana was ninety-five percent certain that Merrill reported everything Ellana told her directly to Fen’Harel, and that last five percent was allowance only for Merrill’s attention span, not her loyalty. 

Nonetheless, it was useful to have identified a channel of information to Solas, even if it flowed mostly in one direction. Sometimes, good things would happen if Ellana complained to Merrill. Mostly she complained about Qunari troop movements or anti-elven pogroms in eastern Orlais, hoping that such complaints would yield quiet action by the Dread Wolf’s forces. (Solas’ network was likely better than the intelligence of what remained of the Inquisition, but he was a busy man, and Ellana wanted his attention on the causes they could agree on.) Once, however, Ellana complained that she missed the lavender soap the Skyhold laundresses had used on her bed linens--only for Merrill to “find” several cakes of it “in the market.” 

Ellana would rather have had a letter. Or a visit. Or for her love to abandon his likely doomed quest to reshape her reality.

But scented soap was a nice gesture. And as long as Ellana had no illusions about where Merrill would come down if Ellana ever put her loyalty to the test, it was nice to have another Dalish around. The last member of Clan Sabrae and the last of Clan Lavellan. Ellana darkly wondered, sometimes, whether that made them Keepers. The two worst Keepers in Dalish history: both taken by the Dread Wolf. Via slightly different particulars. 

Ellana did not mind if Merrill reported on her to Solas. Let him see what a mess he’d made of her. 

“Is everything alright this morning, lethallan?” Merrill asked, looking up from her supply list with a small frown on her pretty face. 

Ellana rubbed her eyelids. She could  _ feel _ the hollows beneath them. “Do I look that bad?”

Merrill scrunched her pert little nose up as she calculated whether Ellana wanted honesty.

“A little bit terrible, yes, I’m sorry,” she said. 

Ellana took a loud slurp of her tea and Merrill winced. She sighed. 

“I didn’t sleep well. Nightmares,” she admitted. 

Merrill straightened, laughably trying to smooth her thoughts from her face. 

“Oh,” Merrill said. “Is it...wolves?” She said the last on a near whisper, and Ellana forbore from pointing out that she had never told Merrill about Solas’ forays into her dreams. 

Ellana shook her head. “Not in my nightmares,” she said. Creators knew Solas had given her more than enough fuel for worry, but her nightmares were more prosaic. Demons streaming through tears in the Veil. The bodies of men she had killed. Faces of children she had not been in time to save. She had no need to borrow trouble from the future; her past was bleak enough.

The rare dreams that Solas visited were the peaceful sort. His hazy distance was frustrating, but not traumatic. 

Merrill worried her lower lip against her teeth. “I could mix you a tonic,” she offered. “You wouldn’t dream at all.” Her tone was reluctant, and Ellana could guess why. Her other boss was not likely to approve of cutting Ellana off from the Fade while she slept. 

Ellana shook her head. “I know the kind. I’d feel even fuzzier tomorrow. I’ll be fine. Shall we go over the requisitions for the latest refugees instead?”

Merrill hesitated, then stood from the table. “Ir abelas,” she said. “I just remembered. I need to...send some letters. To Varric,” she said, lying transparently. 

It took all Ellana had not to call her on it. To tell Merrill that Ellana’s sleeping habits were no longer of Solas’ concern, and that if he wanted to do her any favors, he could stop blowing up bits of Tevinter while Ellana was trying to live in it. 

But Ellana only pasted an understanding smile on her face and nodded. 

“I’ll be fine,” she lied in response. “I’ll go for a walk this afternoon. I’m sure I’ll sleep better tonight.”

Merrill nodded with much more emphasis than that statement deserved. 

* * *

The wind tasted sweet when it blew down from the great cedar trees of the Emerald Graves. It tossed a lock of her loose and golden hair into her face, and Ellana tucked the strand back behind her ear. Something about the gesture troubled her, and Ellana blinked down at her left palm. It was carved from faint blue veilfire, glowing with magic, but still solid and warm. Her study of her hand was interrupted by the clatter of dishes as Merrill deposited a tray of the little filled pastries Ellana had enjoyed in Val Royeaux on the wicker table next to the whitewood lounge chair where Ellana reclined. A silver jug of halla milk, instead of a teapot, was already set there next to two pottery goblets. 

“Well, this is pleasant, isn’t it?” Merrill said cheerfully as she surveyed the scene before them. At first, Ellana had to agree. They sat near the crest of a gently-sloping hill, thickly carpeted with green grass. Further down the hill, dozens of stone houses in various states of construction flanked a wide paved road leading north to Halamshiral. Many of them were already finished; their wooden, planked roofs arched up like the sails of aravels. Elven children ran in the road chasing bouncing balls and fat chickens. 

Ellana craned her neck to look in the opposite direction. There was a house behind them, and somehow, Ellana knew it was her own house. The door was painted the exact shade of green that she favored, and the windowsill bore a pot of cultivated embrium. As Ellana took in the details of the structure, the door opened. A spirit emerged, and its presence seemed unremarkable and necessary to the scene. It was a gentle kind of Purpose, she thought. A spirit of building and housekeeping. 

“The baths are to be finished today,” the spirit informed her politely. “Would you like to see them after your breakfast?” 

Merrill made a pleased noise, but Ellana’s mind was already groping for autonomy within the dream. This was not Ellana’s dream. This was someone else’s wish. 

She stood up. 

“Where is he?” she asked, scanning the surroundings. 

“Who?” the spirit asked, mildly confused. "It is time for breakfast, and then you must oversee the construction." 

“This isn’t my dream,” Ellana said firmly. “This is his. So where is he?”

Merrill’s face fell. “Lethallan…” she said, voice trailing off. “Can’t we just have breakfast? It’s beautiful here.” 

And it was beautiful in the Dales. It always had been. Ellana squinted at the sky: it swirled green and blue through the branches of the towering trees. She supposed that this was the world Solas thought she would have after he won. An elven nation, Ellana and Merrill in the center of it. 

“No,” Ellana said to the air. She wanted no world without Solas in it. No house without him would ever feel like a home. 

“Thanks for the house, I guess,” Ellana said, speaking to the listening void of the sky. “And breakfast. But where are you, in this dream?” 

The Fade was a matter of will. Ellana struggled to exert hers on the scene: to focus beyond the hazy details of the houses down the hill. Solas did not really know what this world look like; he had never lived it, and he did not imagine himself alive to see it. 

A few tense seconds trickled past until the wolf at last emerged from over the top of the hill. His form was hazy and indistinct, the white fur nearly transparent.

Ellana folded her arms under her breasts as she watched him slowly approach. He halted nearly half a dozen paces away from her, his posture wary.

“It does not please you?” he asked, and the familiarity of his voice, issued somehow through animal jaws, sent a shiver down her back. 

“If you can have any dream you want, why aren’t you having breakfast with me instead?” Ellana asked, her throat nearly closing on the words. 

The wolf looked away, down the hill. The children playing. The gentle spirits. He did not answer her. 

Ellana closed her eyes. “In this dream, you’re long gone.”

He did not deny it. 

Ellana wrapped her arms more tightly around herself. 

“I don’t want it. Wake me up.” 

He did not immediately respond, and Ellana stomped her foot on the ground. She was not wearing shoes. She always wore shoes. She could not imagine she would stop just because Solas had remade the world. It made her furious, that he thought that a dream where he had died could ever be a happy one. 

“Wake me up!” she repeated, a note of panic entering her voice. 

The wolf sighed, and the dream fell away. 

Ellana jerked aright in her bed, her heart pounding. It was the middle of the night. She stared at the ceiling until the sun rose.

* * *

Merrill would not meet her eyes the next day, but Ellana had no patience for the regrets of others, being full up with her own. Ellana drank off two cups of tea straightaway, then cleared the table. 

“So, my Mark,” she announced, gesturing at the empty space below her left elbow. “You never saw it, but you know about it, right?” 

“Yes,” Merrill said tentatively. “It did sound very interesting. I wish I could have studied it.”

“I’m sure you can get the details from someone who was there,” Ellana drawled ruthlessly. “But it’s gone now, isn’t it?”

Merrill twisted her hands in her lap. “In what sense?” she asked. 

Ellana pinned her with her gaze. “It didn’t just let me open and close tears in the Veil. It let me dream with full consciousness, didn’t it? Change the Fade.”

Merrill nodded. 

Ellana knocked the stub of her arm against the table. “Why can I still do that, even if the Mark is gone?”

The other woman tilted her chin to the side. “Well, you didn’t dream with your hand, did you?”

Ellana vaguely thought that she ought to be more concerned at the idea that the Mark had left deeper roots inside her than were plucked out with the removal of her left hand. But the thought that she had some power over her dreams was reassuring, instead. 

“Okay,” she said, looking hard at the teapot. “Okay, that’s fine.” 

She did not have to be trapped in her dreams. Hers or anyone else’s. 

* * *

“Do you think it’s too deep here?” the elven man asked her, his arms flexing as he twisted the oars to trail perpendicular to the water. They were seated in a wide wooden rowboat, the prow and stern carved and freshly painted. A small pleasure boat. Around them was a deep and still lake. It was either an hour before dawn or after dusk; Ellana could not tell which. The lake was surrounded by well-kept lawns sloping up to a wood of linden trees, their leaves silvery with new spring growth. The sound of the leaves was carried by the faintest breeze. 

The man seemed to expect an answer from Ellana, but she neither knew him or took the meaning. There had been no transition between falling asleep in her bed in Qarinus and opening her eyes here; she was abruptly present in the lake scene. 

“Pardon?” Ellana asked, puzzled. His manner was very familiar, but she was sure she had never met him before. He had to be Dalish; he wore Mythal’s vallaslin in broad, blue strokes across the rich brown skin of his face. 

His violet eyes narrowed in amusement. 

“This was your brilliant idea,” he said. “Where do the fish even  _ live _ , anyway? Nearer the shore, maybe?"

At a loss, Ellana looked around the boat and saw that there were two fishing poles and a bait box between them. No cooler or net, though. Why was she fishing without a cooler or net? What was she expecting to do if she even caught any? Who was the man across from her?

“The groundskeeper swore this lake was full of fish,” Solas said. “I am sure this spot is fine. We will be able to see the meteor shower better from here.” 

Ellana jerked at the sound of his voice, nearly toppling the boat. He sat right next to her, even though she was positive he had not been there before he spoke. Their thighs were pressed together on the narrow wooden seat. Solas was as seamlessly present as he had been absent a moment before. 

The other man reached for the bait box and opened it. He looked at the contents with obvious dismay. 

“Uh. Pride. They are still alive. Are they supposed to still be alive?” 

Solas grinned. He turned his head only slightly to regard Ellana from the corner of his eye. 

“Do you know how this is done, my heart?” he asked. “You may need to bait Felassan’s hook for him. We asked for the boat, but we didn't know how to fish." 

Ellana looked back at her lover for a long time. She wondered whether this was another of his dreams, but there was an edge of realism that had been missing from the previous dream; the splintery feeling of the wood below her bare feet, the sweet silt smell of the lake water, the hum of biting insects. 

“A memory?” she asked in a low tone. 

Felassan did not pay them any mind; he had stuck his finger trying to tie a hook onto his line, and was cursing inventively. 

Solas watched the other man stick his thumb into his mouth. 

“A good one,” he said, and his voice held an edge of sadness. He shook it away. He reached for the other pole and unspooled the line. 

Ellana looked up at the sky as Solas and Felassan haltingly fumbled with the rods and hooks. She was not sure who she pitied more should they actually manage to catch a fish--the fish, or the two elves. 

As she looked up at the dark blue sky, awash with magic, a thin flash of light streaked across it. 

“Oh,” she said, her throat catching. 

Solas copied her posture. 

“The meteor shower is starting,” he said happily, and Ellana was not sure she’d ever heard that uncomplicated emotion in his voice. 

The first flash was soon followed by a second, a third, until the sky was lit up with them. The sky was streaked with stars. Ellana had never seen anything like it. 

Felassan cast his line into the water. “This was a good idea,” he said reluctantly. 

“All my ideas are good ideas,” Solas said lightly. “This shower only happens every nine hundred and forty three years. I have had a while to consider where to see it.” 

The other man grunted in acknowledgement. 

The lure bobbed in the water. The sky flickered with light. The drone of insects had fallen silent, as though the entire world were watching the show with its breath held.

Ellana sat quietly too. She thought she was caught a bit by Solas’ emotions, not just memories. The peace of the moment. The sadness of the perspective.

Eventually, she put her hand (whole, unmarked) on his arm. He suppressed a flinch, covered it with a cast of the rod. 

“Why does it have to be a memory? Why this one?” she asked. “I would go fishing with you. I would look at the stars with you.” 

He kept his gaze fixed on the sky when he answered. 

“This meteor shower will not happen again for another three hundred and twenty years. You will be dead by then if I do not act,” he said. His voice had a wholly different timbre when he was speaking to her, rather than the words of his memory. 

Ellana shook her head. “It does not have to be this one,” she said. “I would be happy as long as I was with you. Like you were happy here.” 

Solas swallowed hard. 

He cast his rod into the water. The bob sent circles through the surface of the water. They both watched them spread. Felassan cast as well, his face deeply intent as he willed the fish to come. 

“I do not think there will ever be a night like this for me again,” Solas said. “I killed him.” 

Ellana’s gaze jerked to the man opposite her in the boat. He was scolding the fish for snubbing his lure, his young face screwed up in faux annoyance. He wiggled the lure enticingly. 

“What, this night?” Ellana cried.

Solas shook his head. “Four years ago,” he said with hollow sadness. He took a deep breath. “I wish I had happy memories I could share with you. This was the best I could do.” 

The corners of Ellana’s mouth flexed as she covered a grimace. 

“I was happy with you,” she said softly. “Why not one of those?”

Solas finally turned to look at her. His eyes flicked around her face as though memorizing it. 

“I knew the entire time that I would have to leave you,” he said. “And I wanted to send you good dreams, for once. Something not colored with loss.” 

Ellana slid her hand further down his arm until it found his hand. She prized his unwilling fingers apart, interlocked them with hers. 

“Come back to me,” she said urgently. “You didn’t have to go.” 

His hand clutched hers tighter, but he didn’t respond. 

“I don’t want a dream,” Ellana tried again. “I don’t want a memory. I don’t care if it’s not perfect. I don’t care if it’s not what you think I deserve. I don’t want to be alone anymore.”

Solas only clenched his jaw and looked fixedly at the vanished sky. He gave no other indication he had even heard her. The tranquility of the moment battered at Ellana’s mind, no matter how hard she tried to reach for her true feelings. And Solas’. 

The memory ended when Felassan finally hooked a fish and overturned the boat in his excitement. 

* * *

Ellana was in a foul mood the next day. Merrill openly avoided her, Harding cut their meeting off short, and even Charter told her to ‘go get drunk, get laid, get in a fight, do something to get your head out of wherever it is.’

Ellana somehow managed to make it through to the evening without making any new enemies. She went down to the stillroom and went through the familiar motions of mixing a sleeping draught of black lotus and embrium, only slightly awkward by this point for the lack of a hand. She carried it up her room and set the medicine next to an unopened bottle of wine. Drinking either bottle might bring her forward in time to the next morning, but she doubted tomorrow would be better for it. 

She undressed for bed, putting off the decision. She sat down on the edge of her pallet, holding the sleeping draught. 

No matter how much it hurt. She would keep trying to reach him. 

She set the sleeping draught on the floor next to her bed, untouched.

* * *

“Look what I have,” Ionni said, her dark brown eyes dancing. Ellana’s cousin hefted a small oak barrel--she needed both her skinny arms to lift it.

“That’s the sacramental wine we put away last year,” Ellana pointed out, her lips forming the familiar words without her active engagement. 

She remembered this day well; two months before she left for the Conclave. Hahren Yeriel’s nameday fell on the fall equinox. Clan Lavellan had thrown a feast to celebrate the confluence of the events. It had been a good day. 

“It’s not sacramental if it hasn’t been blessed yet,” Ionni retorted, her wide white smile splitting Elgar’nan’s vallaslin, the same ones Ellana had worn. Ones she still wore, in this dream. 

Ellana looked past Ionni. Some members of Clan Lavellan were setting up long reed mats while others tended pots and clay ovens. Bottles of whiskey and skins of fermented halla milk had already been tapped. Her uncle was using a wooden rake to clear an area for dancing, and the clan’s aged Second was tuning her lute. 

Ionni did not wait for Ellana’s acquiescence and expertly tapped the cask. The wine welled out, and the girl yelped, covering the hole with her mouth. 

“Help me, Ellana!” she giggled, wine spilling over her chin. 

Ellana took the cask from her and set it on the ground. Ionni barely seemed to notice; she was walking through the steps of this memory, and Ellana could not bring herself to do it. 

Her family and her clan beckoned from the growing ring of firelight. She could go to them--she remembered the evening well, how she lost herself in the drink and dancing and the joy of being a part of the great weaving of Dalish life. 

Ellana could not forget, though. She still knew who she was. Everything that had happened to her in the four years since she had danced to celebrate the changing of the seasons and the long life of her elder. She looked down at her left hand and concentrated on it until it crackled with green magic. Then she turned and walked away, away from the firelight and the love of her family. She walked into the woods of the Planasene Forest, thick and dark, carved by her intention, though not her memory.

The details were sparser the further she walked from her memory. The trees were black impressions as she lost the color and sound of her clan. She walked faster. There had to be a limit to this. To what Solas could do.

In the gaps in the canopy, Ellana could see bits of hazy green sky. She was breaking away from her dream, into the rest of the Fade.

“Solas!” she called. “I know you’re there.” 

He did not immediately appear, so Ellana broke into a jog. There was a tension in her perception: part of her wanted to extend the forest, fill it in with life and memory. She knew those woods because she had walked them her entire life. There was moss and stone and scent. But she was not a native of the Fade, no dreamer. Not even a particularly talented First. Her clan had needed her good sense more than her magic, and she’d failed them on both accounts. 

She tried to outrun the trees as they filled in the gaps of her recollection. The ground changed as she sprinted, rocks shifting away from her feet, fallen branches flinging themselves from her step. The world attempting to protect her from herself. 

Out past the trees, she knew her nightmares were waiting. Creatures with peering golden eyes and red claws were gathering, ready to pounce if she left the oppressive shelter of her memory. She rejected it anyway--she would not accept the false comfort of her past. 

“Where are you?!”

She finally broke free of the woods, the Fade opening to a broad plain, nearly blank under the torn green sky. 

Ellana whirled to see the wolf watching her from deeper in the forest. She had run some distance, but the fires of her dream were still visible, beckoning to her.

Her chest heaved mostly because she thought it ought to--there was no exertion in her dream. 

“You had no right,” she said when she had finally caught her breath.

“Ir abelas,” the wolf said, and he did sound very sorry. 

“You didn’t even listen to me,” she said. “What I wanted. This isn’t what I wanted.” 

The wolf shifted his weight, sat down on his haunches. Curled his tail miserably around his feet. “It is, though. Your happiest memory. It came from your mind, not mine. I thought…”

“You are not  _ listening! _ ’ Ellana yelled. “I don’t want a memory. I know it’s a memory! I know they’re dead, Solas. I remember the day Josie told me the news. They’re gone, and I know I’ll never see them again.”

“I am sorry,” he repeated, his voice exhausted and taut. 

Ellana took a slow step towards him, and when he did not flee, she took another. It did not take as many steps as it should have to stand in front of him. He was enormous here, his head nearly level with her own. 

She lifted one trembling hand to him. He had never let her come close enough to touch before. She ran two fingers along the soft fur of his cheek.

“I want you to come home, Solas,” she said. “You never even gave me a chance to try to understand. They’re gone, but we’re not. The only reason we’re alone is because that is  _ your _ choice.” 

He did not respond, only blinking large grey eyes at her, his ears back against his skull. 

Ellana took a deep breath. “No more memories, Solas. No more of your dreams. You know what mine are.” 

And the Fade broke away. 

* * *

Ellana slept no better the rest of the night, but her nightmares were the ordinary kind. When she awoke, fatigue covered her like a heavy blanket. She shrugged it off. Josephine periodically sent coffee from Antiva; Ellana ground and brewed it like she was crafting fire salves to protect herself from high dragons. She told herself it was just her life now. It was livable, if only just. She had work left to do. She had a purpose. She had resources, allies, a comfortable lifestyle. It had to be enough. 

Merrill was nowhere to be found. 

_ You better hide _ , Ellana thought. The polite fictions that enabled their friendship were wearing a little thin. 

She gritted her teeth and dove into her correspondence. Letters from Varric and Sera made her feel better, always. Letters from Cassandra and Charter made her feel worse--she put those in a different pile for a better day. 

She put on her favorite green silk dress and evaded her guards to walk alone on the battlements of Dorian’s fortress. Turned her face up to the warm Qarinus sun until she knew her cheeks would be pink the next day. When she got back to her room, she found a picture of a halla on her desk, sketched in Cole’s style. It had been a few weeks since she had seen him, but she smiled, knowing he was near. Then she buckled in and dove into the work of the Inquisition for the remainder of the day, doing her best to exhaust herself from effort. Solas had been quiet recently. She did not know if that was a good thing or a bad one, but it gave her more time to plan support for the Tevinter resistance. 

She took a long bath before bed and told herself she would sleep well. There wasn’t a single person in Thedas who had not endured some hardship in the past decades. She was no better or worse than anyone else. Sleep was just a biological state. It wasn't a trap. It wasn't anything, really. 

* * *

It was not yet morning when she opened her eyes, and she did not know if it was a dream. She was in her bed, but the room was illuminated by the light of a single candle she did not recall kindling. The faint light gilded the edge of the man seated in the chair on the opposite end of the room. 

It had to be a dream; Solas had never been here, and Ellana slept with the door locked, at the top of a fortress warded against him in very particular. The moonlight slanted through the wooden shutters at an angle that Ellana revised to just before midnight. 

As her eyes adjusted, she picked out the details she craved to make flesh of the man who haunted her life like a ghost. He had abjured the golden armor and trappings of his new role in favor of the simple woolen homespun she had known him in. He sat in stillness, one bare foot propped on the opposite knee, his elegant hands steepled together in his lap. There was an open bottle of wine and a single cup on the table next to him. He lifted the cup and appeared to drain it, but only the faint sound as he replaced it on the wooden table reached Ellana’s ears. 

Ellana barely dared to breathe lest the dream pop like a soap bubble rainbow, but something in her posture must have alerted him to her changing awareness. 

“You can sleep,” he said, his low voice barely shifting the air. “I promise, no other dreams tonight.” 

Ellana was long out of the habit of doing as he told her. She rolled to her side, squinting to pick him out against the single flame. He did not look well--worse than the last time, certainly, when he’d been every inch the legend brought to life. Instead, he looked tired, a bit rumpled. Just the man he’d sworn he was. 

“But is this a dream?” she asked, and her dry throat cracked around the words. He did not offer her any of the wine. She swallowed, then reached for the glass of water she left on her nightstand. Solas’ gaze warily tracked her arm, but he did not immediately answer. “Just...the Fade?”

His mouth flexed in some halted expression. “It is what you said you wanted.” 

“And you disagree?”

He sighed, rubbing the palm of a hand over his face. “I trust you. Even if I think it is as bad an idea as it ever was. I only thought I could offer you one night’s peace, and I have been no better at fixing that problem than any other. Consider this a final attempt.” 

Ellana had no real sympathy that he was losing sleep over her nightmares.

Ellana rubbed a bare foot down her calf as she thought about that. Then she scooted over to make room on her bed. 

“Alright,” she said simply, extending her hand to him. “If this is my dream, you’d come hold me.” He stared at her open hand in mute suspicion, and did not move. 

“Are you afraid of me now, Solas? Even here?” she asked him, exasperation sweeping some more of her fatigue away.

He smiled faintly, and did not give the obvious answer about moral danger. “You are the only person in the world I have left to love,” he told her. “I am always afraid of you. Of losing you. Of losing everything else because of it.” 

She did not ask him why he would not really come home then, not when his answer could turn his words into a lie, and she wanted them so much to be true. 

And then he came, anyway. 

He stood slowly from the chair, walking stiffly to her bedside, as though he had waited a long time to move. Ellana shifted to her back as he approached. She was only wearing the long, white linen shirt she used as a nightdress. She’d long since kicked all the bedclothes down to the foot of the mattress. 

With a careful hand, Solas rolled her to her left side, facing away from him and the light of the candle. He hesitated another moment, and stipped off his own shirt, leaving him bare to the waist. She felt the mattress dip as he climbed in behind her, the rough knap of his leggings brushing the backs of her thighs. Ellana let out a slow exhale.

“Shhh,” he crooned, his voice low and soft. “You can rest.” 

He tossed an arm over her at the bend of her waist, palm pressed on her stomach, and she felt his breath stir the fine hairs on the back of her neck. 

She suppressed every question and demand she had for him. He’d come to hold her because she was having nightmares, and she ought to let that be enough for one night. 

His body gradually unfurled behind her. His breathing became regular. Ellana recalled that Solas could fall asleep anywhere, under any circumstances. In ruins full of man-eating spiders. In blazing deserts while high dragons and bone-stripping winds howled overhead. In Ellana’s bed, apparently--if it could be called sleep. Perhaps he was only splitting his consciousness, and some part of him was here, willing her to relax, and the other was still about Fen’Harel’s business. 

Was Ellana expected to just stare at the stone wall until she woke up? 

She squirmed, judging the resistance in Solas’ arms. 

If he’d ever come back to her, even for a single night, she wouldn’t spend it  _ sleeping _ . 

She shifted carefully away from him, wriggling out from under the weight of his arm. He was asleep, or what passed for it in this dream, but he rolled away, onto his back. 

She could wake him up. Beg for bedtime stories. Talk about something uncontroversial.

_ Tell me a story about ancient ruins. A true one.  _

_ It's not as hot here as I feared. _

_ Why didn't you trust me? _

_ I like the fish sauce, actually. _

_ I miss you. _

_How are you going to take down the Veil?_

Better to let him sleep.

Ellana shifted into a kneeling posture next to him. 

Solas, in repose, was beautiful. Her eyes and the faint golden light were kind to him, even if his face was a little puffy with fatigue, and his lips fell open as he slept. Ellana ran out a hesitant finger across his collarbone, tracing the shadows beneath it. His chest was carved in planes and hollows. Solas slowly stretched, bending an arm behind his head to expose a stretch of soft pale skin beneath his bicep, but did not open his eyes. 

Ellana held her breath and bent to kiss the places her gaze had touched. His skin was warm and smooth against her lips. His scent was sweet and sleepy. 

Feeling even more daring, Ellana let her kisses trace further down his chest. The tip of her tongue intersected the faint line of chestnut fluff leading south of his navel to where his loose trousers hung on his narrow hips. She cast a glance up at his face, and his eyelids were fluttering, but his expression was still serene. 

So she reached for the tie of his trousers, trying to strike a balance between overt and disruptive. She was not fantastic with knots, owing to the single hand, but got it undone without much trouble. If Solas was awake, he was not admitting to it. 

Ellana had never touched a cock that was not hard before, hadn’t really even had reason to look. She inhaled sharply through her nose as she pulled him free of the fabric. She was not sure she appreciated the texture, but his cock pulsed in her hand as she cupped him. Ellana gave a long, steady look at his downcast eyelashes, then leaned over him to press an open-mouthed kiss to the base of his shaft. Then another. He was harder by the time she gently wrapped her lips around the tip, nearly all the way there by the time that she gripped his base with her palm. 

She had expected more of a reaction out of him when he woke up than the light press of his hand on the back of her head, fingers spread and weaving in her loose hair. She had the intrusive thought that it was probably not the first time he’d woken up to someone’s mouth on his cock. They’d never spoken about it. Never spoken about a lot of things. He told her he loved her, and expected that to be sufficient to convey her place in his world. Did he love her like this? With her lips covered in spit, her hand shaking from anxiety as she bent over his cock? Did he love her when what she wanted wasn’t pretty, wasn’t proud? He’d never said.

She heard his breathing pick up, even if he did not speak. The minute movement of his hips. The slight arch of his back. His cock was by now hot and hard in her mouth, tip brushing the back of her throat when she could force herself to relax. She thought he was getting close, so she abruptly pulled her lips off of him. He sucked in an outraged breath when the cold night air hit his wet cock, but still said nothing. 

His eyes were mere slits as he looked down his body at her, and disappointment curved his mouth. Ellana met that look with equanimity as she pulled her nightshirt over her head, then rose onto her knees to push her smallclothes down and over her knees. She kicked all her clothing to the floor.

“If it’s my dream, I can have whatever I want,” she told him, wishing her voice didn’t sound so close to breaking. And he wouldn’t say no, would he? 

His hands braced her as she moved to straddle his hips. She sat erect so that he had no choice but to see her and the entire, golden shape of her body. His cock was hard against his stomach, caught between them. She rolled her cunt over him deliberately, and his breath stuttered. She had been too nervous to be more than a little bit wet, but that was changing. If he’d hold her hips, she’d be able to touch herself with her remaining hand, but he was still holding back, remaining passive, hands resting loosely across her thighs. 

He wanted it to be all her fault, how they’d feel the next day, she thought. Would either of them feel less heartbroken, though, if she were the only one to blame for it? 

Fine. She thought she could come just rocking against him. She planted her hand next to his shoulder and let the long, hard shape of his cock trace through her folds and brush her clit. Again. He subtly lifted his hips to try to catch the tip of his cock against her entrance. It would have been easy; she was soft and wet by then. She could have gone all the way up on her knees so that they could both watch his cock disappear inside her body. 

She wanted him to ask for it. To admit it. Admit it was what they both wanted. 

So she ground down against him, offering him no relief, twisting her hips so that her clit rubbed in circles. Solas’ fingertips dug into her thighs, and he finally growled as he yanked her to him. The muscles in his stomach flexed wildly as he sat up, bringing their faces nearly level. 

His nails scraped her back as he raised his hands up to her shoulders. Ellana couldn’t move, could barely see as his face filled her field of vision. Solas kissed her, his mouth still redolent of sleep and the red wine he’d been drinking. Too much tongue, too much teeth for his usual finesse, but it was brief. He toppled them over onto the bed, ending up on top. Before she had a chance to acclimate to her change in fortune, Solas had her arranged beneath him, his knees spreading her thighs. He ducked a shoulder to pull one of her thighs over his elbow, leaving her entire body exposed to him. 

He reached down with his other hand, and the hard tip of his cock pressed against her folds. He rubbed it against her clit, back and forth, wetting himself. He grunted softly as the blunt pressure penetrated, sliding in a few inches quickly. When he exhaled, his stomach relaxed against hers as his weight pressed her down into the mattress. As he settled on top of her, he wrapped his arms back around her shoulders.

Ellana tried to catch his mouth with hers again, but Solas ducked his head and pressed his mouth to a spot just under her ear. She couldn't see his face. 

“I cannot be here tomorrow when you wake up,” he whispered into her ear. His hips flexed, and his cock struck a spot deep within her body. His teeth scraped the skin of her neck as she wiggled for some kind of leverage. “Did you even think that far?”

She didn’t know if the question was for her or him, but what had he thought would happen when he crawled into her bed? 

She got one foot planted flat on the mattress and rolled her hips up to meet him. He was so far inside her his pubic bone pressed against her clit. Tension was building quickly, twisting in her core. 

“I just missed you,” Ellana said desperately. “I love you. I wanted you to come back.” 

He laughed, and the sound was mirthless and a little wild. “Like this?” He pulled back, his cock slipping through her body, only to thrust back in hard enough to make her squeak. He repeated it. 

She wanted to respond and argue with him, but she couldn’t catch her breath as his hips moved faster. Her orgasm rushed up on her quickly, curling around her nipples, vibrating in her stomach, spreading in a pool of warmth through her hips. She gasped, body freezing at the sensitivity of it. Solas arched his back to change the angle and held onto the muscle at the side of her neck with his teeth, thrusting a few more times as he emptied himself in her. 

And then he was rolling away, dropping her thigh and disentangling himself from her embrace. 

Each second was suddenly a tripwire. Ellana swallowed the deafening beating of her heart. She didn’t know when he’d vanish. Any moment now. 

He was not touching her anymore, but his body was curved towards hers. Face guarded and faintly surprised, like the first time she’d kissed him. 

“Like this,” Ellana gulped, answering his question from minutes before. “Or any way. I don’t care how. Or even why. You can always come back.” 

His face crumpled in hurt. He didn’t want to think about a door left open for him. It was easier for him if there were no other possibilities than the one he'd chosen. 

But he didn’t respond, instead pressing his lips to her forehead. They were hot and lingering. His breath spread out over her face. 

As his mouth pulled away from her skin, Ellana felt fatigue dragging her down into blackness.  She tried to protest. This was a good dream. She didn’t want it to end. 

“No more bad dreams tonight, I promise,” Solas whispered. “I promise.” 

* * *

A stream of light struck Ellana’s face, jolting her into awareness. The pigeons that nested in the gutters of the next storey of the great Tevinter tower were no longer cooing; it had to be at least midmorning. She never slept that late. 

She stretched out her body, gone stiff from lying in one position, then sat up, recalling the previous night. 

She was alone, of course. Wearing the same linen shirt and smallclothes she’d gone to sleep in. The sheets were clean and unrumpled. The bar was still turned across the door. 

She let out her breath through her nose. He had said it was a dream, after all. A better one than the ones he’d offered before. But one that was over, vanished even from the Fade. 

Ellana rose and went to the table where she kept her ewer and basin, swinging out her muscles to loosen them. She poured a cup of water to clear the sleep from her mouth. 

It was only then, cup raised to her lips, that her gaze fell on the only new details in the room: an empty bottle of wine, set neatly in the waste bin. And the remnants of a candle in its brass holder, left to burn itself all the way down to the wick. 

**Author's Note:**

> I've been listening to a lot of Taylor Swift recently and it's got me in my feeeeeelings. 
> 
> Kink-shame me on Twitter @YTCShepard and Tumblr @ YoursTrulyCommanderShepard


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